1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to improvements in a method and apparatus for feeding whole produce to centrifugal slicers.
2. Prior Art
Centrifugal slicers for slicing whole produce are well known in the art. One commercially available slicer is the URSCHEL Model CC slicer manufactured and sold by Urschel Laboratories, Inc., Valparaiso, Ind. Although the URSCHEL Model CC centrifugal slicer was designed with potato chips as a primary consideration, it is also capable of producing slices from a wide variety of other products, including raw apples, beets, mushrooms, etc.
In the operation of a centrifugal slicer such as the URSCHEL Model CC, produce enters a rotating impeller and is forced against the inner surface of a slicing head assembly, which consists of eight separate slicing heads and knives. As produce passes each knife in a smooth and uninterrupted manner a slice is produced, thus a multiplicity of slices can be produced within a very short period of time.
In the production of certain products, e.g., apple chips, it is highly desirable to monolayer the slices after they are sliced. That is, individual slices should be lying flat on a conveyor and not overlapped or piled on top of one another. When this occurs, clumping is virtually eliminated and finished product quality is at its optimum.
While a centrifugal slicer such as the URSCHEL Model CC works well on apples, the throughput is difficult to monolayer if more than one apple is sliced at a time. Because of the speed with which the centrifugal impeller must rotate, even if one attempts to reduce capacity by having only one outlet, it is still difficult to capture and monolayer the slices from that one outlet.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art to provide a centrifugal slicer having the advantages of known centrifugal slicers and yet having a reduced throughput so that the throughput slices can be caught and monolayered.
The slicer blades should encounter the produce to be sliced only at regular intervals to prevent overlapping of the output from each blade. This requires that only one unit of produce be present in the slicer at a time, a new one to be fed only after the previous one is fully sliced.
Conventional techniques of feeding the slicer to satisfy the above constraint will require timing the in-feed at regular intervals. This interval should be the time taken to slice the largest unit of produce rather than the average size unit of produce to avoid overlapping of the output.
This results in capacity reduction that can best be overcome by the simple and fully reliable invention disclosed herein. The slice quality in terms of thickness, uniformity and level of scrap is superior since the produce no longer moves around in the slicer. The speed of the slicer can also now be moderately adjusted to suit downstream processing requirements as would arise in any practical manufacturing operation, without deterioration of slice quality.